Creating A Mobile Startup: Team And Advisors

Nobody
wins success without a strong team. To say a bit more precise, software development for startups is never successful without a great team. Nothing happens
without proper structuring, selecting, and building interactions.
Since about a half of our clients are startups, we know the
specificity of this work. We know how to build right interactions
with the startup owner. We know the common pitfalls. All of this we'd
like to share with you.

Most
startups deal with remote teams, and it's a great, efficient way of
building a startup. It worked for plenty of startups before, and it
can work for you as well.

What
Is A Team?

How
do you define a team? It must be a group of people very close to you,
people who you trust. Together with these people you can achieve and
deliver, be it your soccer team or your startup team.

Your
startup team are people who can implement your ideas. Every person in
the team must deliver, be they your longtime friends or recently
hired professionals. A startup is not merely based on fun (although
it's quite a good place to have fun), it's the place where you build
your product, where you sell, where you change the world. Everyone
who is involved in your business, either your employees or partners
or your wife, are a part of your team. You have a common goal – to
create a product, to establish a company, to fulfill the needs of
your customers. Together you are working to achieve these goals.

Team
Structure

You start with a core team of one or more co-founders. You
also might have advisors, investors and contractors in your team.
Over time you grow, and more and more people are added to your team.

At
the beginning you're small and you don't have a lot of resources. In
order to grow you have to be wise with distributing the resources.
You cannot afford having a big team. At the same you should take care
of lots of important things: vision, product, sales, promotion,
accounting and legal.

A
very convenient way for startups to organize their business is hiring
a remote team with contractors. In this way you can focus on your
core business needs. Your core competence is understanding your
client's needs and finding a way to satisfy them with the software
you build, so you cannot delegate these in any case. The rest
(accounting, promotion and product implementation) can be delegated
to contractors who specialize in that.

Core
Team

The
must have here is CEO, who can be accompanied by another co-founder:
CTO, or co-CEO, or COO. The main point here is sales. If you don't
want to sell, you shouldn't start a new business. There is no 'if you
cannot sell', because we believe everyone can – or everyone can
learn how to do that. A lonely CEO is also quite a widespread
scenario.

How
should you spread responsibilities inside the core team? Let's look
at a startup canvas.

Advisors

Advisors
are smart people from your product niche. Typically they have either
a business or technical experience and knowledge which can be highly
important for you. It's great to involve advisors to your team; at
the same time you cannot be sure that gurus will come and solve all
the problems for you. They won't do it instead of you. They will give
you advice; you are here to solve problems. In a rare case you might
meet a senior entrepreneur who'd like to use their sales channel to
spread your product. But you cannot count on that, and experience
tells everyone to rely on themselves.

Investors

Investors
are a combination of an angel and a devil. They give you money, they help—and later they come back for your soul. The money comes without a
problem when the investor sees the value in you and your business.
You must become valuable before going to the investors. You must
create this value. They must see how they'll get the money back with
you. Investors won't solve the problems instead of you either.

Contractors

Freelancers. These
are people who want to live on their own without taking too much
responsibility. If they are in a good mood and know how to do it,
you'll have a result. Otherwise your'll just lose your time and
money.

Agencies. Solid
agencies are a better option. Agencies provide services to help you
with specific questions. It can be legal & accounting, marketing
& promotion, or product development. According to our experience
and the experience of the startups we work with, extending your
product development team with an agency is a wise and efficient
option. Especially if you have a limited budget for an MVP. You may
delegate product implementation to an agency and focus on your core
business.

How
To Get Maximum Benefits From An Agency?

1.
Get a consultation before and during the collaboration.

Feedback
on idea, suggestions on implementation, approximate estimates.
Viability of the project on the emotional level. This doesn't spend
your budget.

2.
Use agency expertise and consider suggestions.

Get
options, decide how they suit you, and choose.

3.
Hire top people for the tasks.

Feel
free to talk to team members. It's your team and you're going to work
with these people. Be confident in them.

4.
Agency is responsible for delivery.

Once
the contract is signed, the agency has its own responsibility and
liability. You provide money and availability to answer different
questions. So demand results from them!

5.
Let them guide you.

Software
development is a complex area of knowledge. It's not necessary that
you know everything. The agency is here to help you with processes
and technologies. Ask for explanations if you want to understand
what's happening behind the scenes.

6.
Flexibility.

Hire
and fire on demand, fast. Scale up and down, fast. It's not easy to
do with the internal team members whom you hired, and it's evil. But
it's easy with an agency. You don't have the employer responsibility.

7.
Share problems and ask for solutions.

Agency
is interested in your success, so they will find some ways to help
which you might have not even thought of.

How
To Wisely Select An Agency That Will Bring You Profits

1.
Define your cost category.

Be
reasonable. Don't participate in the lottery called 'the cheapest
wins' (making a Facebook for $300). Buying a cheap car, you'll run
into a lot of problems.

2.
Get access to the key people in the agency.

Talk
directly to chiefs, so they can feel you're an important client and
treat you accordingly.

3.
Good agency asks LOTS of meaningful questions.

Smart
people ask relevant and thoughtful questions about your goals, about
your customers and the product, because they want to help you achieve
these goals. Questions about requirements and technical questions are
asked. Questions should show the level of their understanding and
involvement into the talk.

4.
Get a dedicated person responsible for delivery.

Typically
on the agency side it's a PM. Project manager helps you to keep
things organized and manage the remote team. In a team you might have
at least one developer, one QA, one designer. So it's easier to have
a single point of contact. It's nice to brainstorm together. At the
same time everything should be transparent so you could communicate
also with each individual.

5.
See and Feel proven track of records to discover the ability to
deliver.

Talk
to the people who made the portfolio projects, talk to the existing
clients. How does it correspond to your product from technical and
business perspectives?

6.
The next point is critical for working with any team especially with
the remote one – it's Communication!

а)
Mutual understanding & talking the same language; b) time zone;
c) culture and values; d) being easy to meet. Every point in the
estimate must be explained and thus be understandable.

7.
Honesty.

Rarely
is a complex software product implemented without any issues. If
you're informed about issues and risks straightforward and
beforehand, then your product is in good hands.

What
Else Must Be Considered?

Even
if you choose a reliable agency, there are pitfalls you should be
aware of.

1.
Start with understanding your goals!

If
you want to build a product fast and you know what you want – a
remote team is the perfect choice. If you're looking to get the next
round of investment, your local team members would typically increase
company evaluation. Know your goals, share your goals.

2.
Track the progress!

In
order to make sure that your goals are achieved, see how smaller
steps are made. Do it on the regular basis, ask for regular demos or
reports. See the results with your own eyes.

3.
Trust-control balance.

On
the one hand you want to see the results and make sure the milestones are
met. On the other hand it may end up in microcontrol, which would
consume a lot of your time and distract the team from their tasks. So
it's easier to let the team do their job and use smart tools which
show you the real situation: code repository, task/bug trackers,
agile boards, etc.

4.
The worst thing in working with remote teams is assumptions.

Don't
make any assumptions, question everything, ask how people understood
you, ask about the complexity of the tasks, about ideas. In this way
you'll manage your own and team members' expectations positively.

All
in all, we wish you to work with reliable partners, find awesome team
members and launch new great products! Feel free to contact us with
any further questions – or if you are in search of a contractor
agency.